Cambridge Residents Hear SDS Speakers

A community rally in support of the six SDS demands attracted 200 people--half of them students--to the Central Square Post Office on Saturday.

Many of the older Cambridge residents present at the Peace and Freedom party rally stood on the edge of the crowd and across the street. When the rally began to march north on Mass Ave. to Harvard Yard, few of them joined in.

The worker-student rally was called by the Peace and Freedom party in a meeting at the Cambridge Community Center Friday night. After hearing an account of the seizure and bust of University Hall, the 150 people present voted unanimously to endorse the SDS demands.

Reaction to the six demands among the Central Square crowd was mixed. "A lot of people don't support them," said one Cambridge resident. "A lot of them work for Harvard, after all. Harvard is the biggest employer in the city."

"What the students are doing is right," said another onlooker. "I had the chance to work for Harvard once, but they didn't pay enough."

According to Richard duPont, a Putnam Avenue resident who addressed the rally at Central Square and in the Yard, "Why should we have to move out of Cambridge to make way for high paid technicians? My house on Putnam Avenue has to come down. I'll be damned if it will come down without a fight."